Hope
by Fennekin
Summary: Yoshitake had been a hero once.


The summer sun blazed overhead, burning the top of his blonde head but Yoshitake Tanaka persisted on, clutching the strap of his book bag tighter. Today could be the day. There was no doubt he would be given a good scolding once he returned home but this possibility alone was worth it. Today could be the day that boy returned to him.

It had become a ritual of sorts, really. Every day during the summer he would climb the stone steps and play his flute in the peaceful shrine. His mother called him obsessive ― crazy for disappearing every day with the tattered book bag of his youth, filled with items that had captivated that boy. There was no way she could've known his reasons but this compulsion that pulled him every day to that shrine alarmed her. He didn't have the heart to justify it because he knew it was crazy too.

The stone steps seemed to go on forever but as he reached the top he felt his heart give a little flutter ― today could be the day. His constant mantra that kept him rooted to this place he would always be cursed to return to. The shrine always looked so beautiful when he looked upon it with hope in his eyes.

Once upon a time, Yoshitake had been a hero. He did alright in school and had good, dependable friends, he'd won a couple trophies for various forms of karate in his middle school days but he always looked back at this time, at this place and thought that this was surely the proudest moment of his life.

Whatever compelled the neighborhood kids to bully that boy, Yoshitake couldn't be completely sure but he could guess. He probably played video games by himself and held his mother's hand tightly while she ran errands. He probably ate lunch alone and got picked on in school. He was probably a lot like himself.

On a swelteringly hot day not unlike this one, he'd found the boy crying helplessly with his school books strewn about the shrine. Snot dribbled down his lip and he was bruised and scraped here and there. Pathetic, really. It was on that day, Yoshitake gave that boy a whistle to call upon a hero.

In all honesty, there was nothing special about the situation. He had given a handful of people whistles to summon this masked crusader of truth and justice ― but no one had ever blown the whistle. Every day he had come to that shrine hoping someone would blow that whistle and not one of them did, which was extremely disheartening to his heroic mind.

No one had had any faith in him. It made him feel small and insignificant and he thought of going back to his life of being a nameless loser who was bullied at his own school. He thought of throwing away his red scarf and superhero mask and becoming nothing once again.

But that boy had looked at him with hope in his eyes. That boy had the look of someone who had just seen a real life superhero ― and Yoshitake became determined to be the superhero that boy believed him to be.

He made himself comfortable in the very center of the shrine's stone ground, where he too might become just another statue to pray to if he kept this up for too long. Something in him was positive that boy would return ― how could he not, if Yoshitake couldn't forget that overjoyed face of his?

With a quick swipe through his bag he retrieved the silver flute he'd play far past its prime. The poor instrument was battered and bruised from being thrown around carelessly and stepped on but when he pressed his lips to it, the sound was just as it had been so long ago. As the first few quiet notes of Pachelbel's Canon rang out the memories flooded back to him immediately.

The boy's hand being crushed beneath a bully's sandal. The boy reaching without hesitation or doubt for the whistle just as Yoshitake arrived to thwart the bullies and scare them away. Perhaps it had been only lunch money in danger of being stolen but pride blazed in his belly and the boy smiled up at him with such genuine happiness it took Yoshitake's breath away when he thought of it in retrospect. Perhaps lunch money was all that was in danger but he had given hope to that downtrodden boy and redeemed Yoshitake's pride once and for all.

Years passed and he never came back, that boy with the hope in his eyes. Even if he did, Yoshitake doubted they'd be able to recognize each other. Though he felt such strong feelings towards that time in his life, he could hardly remember that boy's face or the soft inflections of his speech ― he was merely a relic of his memory now. Still Yoshitake continued to visit, his flute playing a delicate medley, clinging to that hope he'd seen so long ago.


End file.
